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Patients given steroids to treat community-acquired pneumonia did not have lower mortality rates or fewer ICU days but they did have shorter overall hospital stays, researchers reported in the Journal of Hospital Medicine. Researchers said the data were not strong enough to recommend routine steroid use in all adults hospitalized with CAP.

Related Summaries

The rate of community-acquired pneumonia requiring hospitalization among adults ages 50 to 64 was four times higher than for those 18 to 49, with even higher rates found among the elderly, according to a study in the New England Journal of Medicine. Researchers said 21% of patients required ICU care and 6% needed mechanical ventilation.

A study in the journal Critical Care Medicine that analyzed Medicare discharge data on more than a half-million patients linked high hospital ICU admission rates to poorer pneumonia care. Data showed that hospitals with higher ICU admissions were less likely than those with lower rates to provide appropriate antibiotics and pneumococcal and influenza vaccines and that pneumonia mortality rates increased in conjunction with ICU admissions.

Quality improvement interventions helped to increase the number of blood cultures performed on pediatric patients with community-acquired pneumonia, according to a study in the journal Pediatrics. Researchers found no impact on length of stay. The findings support ordering blood cultures for all patients admitted with community-acquired pneumonia, the researchers wrote.

Research in the Journal of Hospital Medicine showed that young patients who received guideline-recommended antibiotic treatment for community-acquired pneumonia did not fare significantly better than those who did not receive the therapy.

Guidelines call for routine blood cultures only in the sickest patients with community-acquired pneumonia, but researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center found those with the highest disease severity were no more likely to get them than other patients, and that ICU patients had a lower likelihood of being tested. The study team's Research Letter in JAMA Internal Medicine said data show the rate of blood cultures collected in hospitalized CAP patients increased from 29% in 2002 to 51% in 2010.